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During my morning readings, I came across Ben Christopher's 21 November 2013 submission to the online California Magazine, "Cal Lecturer's Email to Students Goes Viral: 'Why I am not canceling class tomorrow.'"  In it, Christopher offers comments about the unusualness of an email from mathematics lecturer Alexander Coward spreading across the breadth of the internet amidst the other things that populate webspace before presenting some of the professor's remarks about the email and the text of the email itself.

I find myself somewhat...conflicted about the text of the email.  Coward makes some good points regarding higher education and the unique opportunities offered by top-tier schools such as UC Berkeley (although he does not write with as much grace as could be hoped, and his tone comes off as sometimes condescendingly sing-song).  He is correct to point out that "class hours are valuable," for they are; it is during them that direct interaction with the instructor is most possible (although how much can be had from among 800 students is an open question; having TAs--or GSIs, in the email--makes a difference).  He is correct also in his comments about his teaching decisions, that each pedagogical choice he makes will help some and fail to help others.  Many people fail to recognize this, thinking that one method will be able to be universally effective, and there is not a teaching practice that will reach all students.  If nothing else, this is because the teaching environment is one of reciprocity; it relies upon the interchange between teacher and pupil to be effective, and it is the case that students are sometimes simply unwilling to engage.  Coward is correct in noting the complexity of the world, something my own experiences have taught me students are often unwilling to recognize; things are not simple.  And I, who have devoted most of my years to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, can hardly argue with his assertion that education is among the noblest of pursuits.  Self-serving as it may seem for an educator to say so, it is only through learning (in many modes, admittedly, not all of which can happen in a classroom) that matters are improved.

At the same time, I am a believer in the power of collective bargaining, having benefited from it once or twice, myself.  As a matter of principle, I do not cross picket lines, and I do not encourage others to do so; rather the opposite is true.  While I can sympathize with Coward's position (something in his comment that "the choice not to strike is quite easy" coupled with his title of "Lecturer" tells me that he knows his participating in the strike will lead to his dismissal, and the loss of the paycheck is a frightening thing, as I well know), I know also that his employment is in some senses complicit in structures of exploitation (the striking GSIs he mentions are underpaid, under-rewarded, and undertaking significant debt that they will try to pay off for decades so that their institution will be able to inflate its performance numbers without hiring/paying people who are willing and happy to work--for a decent wage).  Worse, while his position at UC Berkeley may be contingent, he has a concurrent appointment, evidently on the tenure track, at another institution entirely; he is in a position of privilege therefore, and for him to avoid what is for him a relatively minor risk in such a way...I have to wonder how appropriate the man's name is.

Ad hominem aside, there is another point to consider, and it is one which Coward addresses in his email.  The university as an institution has a number of missions.  I have repeatedly written about the dual scholarly mission: to develop knowledge and to disseminate it.  Both are done in the pursuit of the ultimate understanding of what is.  Both speak to the improvement of the human condition, so that another mission of the university (maugre Fish and those who parrot him far less intelligently) is the betterment of people.  Coward acknowledges this, noting that "Society is investing in you [the students,] so that you can help solve the many challenges we are going to face in the coming decades, from profound technological challenges to helping people with the age old search for human happiness and meaning"; he tells his students that they, and the rest of us, are and ought to be working to make things better for people.  The strike, while inconvenient for students (as was one in which I participated), is aimed at making things better for those who are set to help others prepare to make things better.  Participating in it would have been in keeping with one of the purposes of the university as a whole, even as not kept with another.

It is...complicated, indeed.